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Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Tweakers and Acid Zombies

The ex-con glares over the fence that
surrounds his compound. A tall, lean man, he wears a torn shirt and a
kilt. Leather snake-leggings cover his legs from his ankles to his
knees, and he stands with the wide stance of a man exuding supreme
confidence. I eye the machete in the sheath against his chest, take
in the tattoos on his face, put him somewhere in his sixties. I nod
over my shoulder, toward the emptiness behind me. The landscape is a
collection of sandy washes and scrubby bushes, all but inhabitable
except for rattlesnakes, coyotes, and lizards.

A bombing range isn't far away

“I've been sleeping out there for a
couple of weeks,” I say. “Different places each night.”

“Yeah, so what?”

His lips open wide, a grimace that
exposes a lone tooth in his upper gum. I stand as tall as I can, chin
up, determined not to wilt under the force of his personality. It
pushes against me, a strong wind probing for weakness. I glare right
back at him.

“Just being neighborly.” I am
determined not to wilt under the obvious attempt at intimidation.
“Thought you might like to know who was living out there, that's
all.”

We face off for a long minute, then I
shrug and smile. I never was any good at a head-butting contest. He
relaxes, and it's like we got something over with, although I'm not
sure what. Q_____ motions over his shoulder toward his mud hut. “Got
some coffee on. A little strong, pot's been on the fire
all morning.”

I enter his compound and walk between
the trees toward the doorway, pass two honking geese and a crate
filled with lettuce and tomatoes. Inside, in semi-darkness, a chained
wolf curls under a table. My host and I sit on straw bales and drink
burned coffee, soon discover we both love going on long adventures.
He tells me about his cocaine dealing days, adds that he bought a
boat from the profits and sailed Australia's coastline. He fought any
local who wanted to fight—$50.00 purse—didn't need the money,
just liked to fight. Q_____ offers a pipe packed with weed and I turn
it down.

“Did a lot of heroin and meth in my
lifetime,” he says, putting the unlit pipe on a chair. “Got
busted for selling pot and spent time in the state pen. Get a regular
check every month because the doctors say I've got dementia.”

He stretches out on a mattress on the
floor. We're quiet for a while, then he suggests I move into the
trees next to his compound. “The kid moved out a couple days ago,”
he adds. “Nobody living there at the moment.”

“Those trees, you consider them
yours?”I drain my coffee
and balance the cup on my knee. My nerves jangle from the caffeine
overdose.

“Everybody who lives out here is a
squatter. Those trees are mine because I say they're mine.”

I recall Sherry Rose saying whoever
lives near Q_____ has to work for him, and I'm not about to gather
wood in exchange for sleeping on squatter's dirt. If he wants me to
work for him, I'll leave. If he doesn't, maybe I'll stay until it's
time to restart Ride between the Stars.

“Come on,” Q_____ says. “I'll
show you the site.”

I push my bike along the canal road,
through the blistering heat, enter a cool grove about forty yards in
diameter. Salt cedars, trunks gnarled and misshapen, loom overhead,
and the earth beneath is strewn with empty cans. I toe a fork that
sticks up out of the sand. Q_____'s compound is to the north, and
Sherry Rose lives in the grove to the south. Do I really want to camp
between a crazy woman and a demented ex-con?

I glance up at the trees, revel in the
cool air, sigh and offload my panniers. In the desert, shade is the
ultimate seductress.

*

The next couple of weeks I spend most
of my time writing. Every four days I cycle into Slab City to the
solar-powered Internet Cafe,where I charge my batteries. I have a
standing invitation to stop in and drink coffee at Q_____'s in the
morning. Sometimes I go and sometimes I don't. Occasionally I watch
Sherry Rose trudge down the canal road with an armload of firewood
for the Lord of the Manor. He has not asked me to work in exchange
for sleeping in “his” trees, and I suspect he never will. Q_____,
ever the ex-con, is conditioned to sense and exploit weakness. That's
what he did to survive in the pen, and that's what he does to survive
in the desert. He can push the crazy woman into working for him and
he can't push me. So, he leaves me alone and badgers her into doing
his bidding.

Home for a few weeks

One evening I stop for a visit, when he
is well into his fifth glass of wine, sit on a bale close to the
door. Three of us share the muddy light; me, Q_____, and Juan. Juan
lives in Niland, a nearby town. He's a Mexican Indian, so soft spoken
he's hard to hear, and black hair falls down his shoulder blades like
silk curtains. A small man, he's as meek as a
beatdown dog. He comes for the booze and weed, doesn't say much when
I try to draw him out.

Q_____ stirs the coals on the hearth,
and they glow a dirty orange beneath the grate. He's cooked beans for
supper and offers me a bowl. I eat and watch him light a pipe and
pass it to Juan. An earthy scent fills the room. The wind picks up,
roof tarps flapping in the breeze, and one of the mules brays out in
the corral. The Lord of the Manor gestures toward the doorway.

“Get some firewood,” he says.

Juan leaves the hut. He returns with an
armload of mesquite branches, stacks them next to the hearth.

“Get me more wine,” Q_____ says.

Juan goes outside and returns with a
purple jug. Q_____ refills our glasses and I stare him down.

“What?” he says.

I look away and keep my mouth shut,
listen to him order Juan around for the next couple of hours. Anger
stirs me—a spark that becomes a fire by the time I drink my third
glass of wine.

“Where's my pipe?” Q_____ says.

Juan shrugs. He doesn't know and
neither do I. Q_____ scrounges through the folds in the quilt on his mattress,
drags his fingers across the dirt floor. “Damn it, Juan. Look for
my pipe.”

The little man falls to his knees and
peers at the earthen floor. Something snaps inside me and I put down
my glass. “You are not his slave. Tell him to go to hell.”

The only sound comes from
the gurgle of the boiling beans. Q_____
stares me down, hatred in his gaze. I don't care; he's a bully and
I'd like to drive my fist through his remaining teeth. I think he's about two
seconds away from lunging at me, and I prepare myself for his charge.

“I think it's best if you go,” he
says.

I'm surprised and relieved. I didn't
really want to fight him, figure I would have been hurt regardless of the outcome. I glance at Juan, who hangs his head and remains silent,
leave without another word.

In the morning, I pack up and cycle
into Slab City. I have my pepper spray on my side and a don't
fool-with-me look on my face. Least I hope it's a don't fool-with-me
look. I'm leaving a bad situation for one potentially worse, and that
thought is more than a little scary.

*

The first trailer burns three weeks
into my stay. Flames lick upward and smoke whorls into the

air. Two guys run over and disconnect the propane canisters, haul
them to safety. Fire engulfs the structure. The trailer is on the
other side of the road from my tent site, and its owner is a
white-bearded old man who keeps to himself. He's off in his truck
somewhere, is in for a surprise when he returns.

A siren sounds in the direction of
Niland, and a firetruck rumbles up the road. The firemen put out the
flames and all that's left is a smoldering black skeleton. People
gather in clusters and I hear murmurs of conversation.

“Must have pissed someone off.”

“Maybe it was electrical.”

“Glad someone disconnected the
canisters. Go off like bombs.”

“I heard a neighbor threatened him
over a drone.”

“He has a drone?”

“He was flying over the guy's place
and he didn't like it.”

“Maybe he burnt it for the
insurance.”

The old man wheels up in his pickup and
our eyes meet for an instant. He walks toward what's left of his
home, circles it a few times. The crowd drifts away and I head to my
campsite. He leaves and goes somewhere else for the night, and the
next day scavengers pick through the ashes for usable material. I
doubt they find any.

Two weeks later, the Coffee Camp burns
down. Rumor has it the burnout was over a meth deal. A week later
someone burns out the Skate Park Camp. Rumor has it the burnout was
for practice. I don't know what or whom to believe in this den of
tweakers and acid zombies. I do know I'm surrounded by desperate
people and I try my best not to make myself a target. Andrew, a
gregarious Welshman, and one of the good guys, says I have nothing to worry about. They think
I'm in great shape from riding my bike across the country and nobody
wants to mess with me.

I sleep with my bike inside my tent and
footsteps in the desert wake me at all hours of the night. A white
dog befriends me and sleeps in my campsite. Zero is my guardian angel
and I spend hours scratching and petting him. I work at getting my
bike ready for the next 7,500 miles—up to Portland, Maine, and then
back down to Key West—put my GoFundMe donations to good use buying
parts from Amazon. The weather turns hot and I suffer while I wait
for the cool down.

Battened down for 50 mph gusts

For a couple of weeks I lay low, hear the shouts and screams
at night, avoid the arguments I run across during the day. Someone at
the Internet Cafe opines that Slab City is a safety net for the
down-and-outters with nowhere to live, and I silently disagree.

Slab City is no safety net.

This desert hellhole is a concrete
floor, and when the down-and-outters hit, they hit hard. They can
move horizontally, or upward if they get their life together, but the
downward fall stops here. This is rock bottom for some, and that's
the hard truth about this place.

The cool down comes none too soon and I
leave without fanfare. I survived my winter layover and now it's time
to look ahead. Maine, here I come!